Guest blogger: Steven Johnson!

Sbj2009Beach-1

I'm happy to welcome our new guest blogger, Steven Berlin Johnson! I've long been an admirer of Steven's extraordinary writing. He's the author of six books, most of which will be familiar to Boing Boing readers, including the recent bestsellers Everything Bad Is Good For You and The Ghost Map.

His new book is The Invention Of Air: A Story Of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth of America. Cory described it as "a wide-ranging, learned, engrossing biography of the polymath pioneering scientist, Joseph Priestley. Priestley, a contemporary of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, was a kind of radical scientist/politician/theologian, an all-but-unimaginable combination in today's world of politicised science and deep fractures between faith and empiricism." (For other in depth reaction to the books' political implications and Steven's work in general, see these reviews from Daily Kos and Salon.)

Steven's also the founder of three influential web sites: the late lamented online magazine FEED, the community site Plastic.com, and most recently the hyperlocal service outside.in. He'll be blogging at Boingboing from his book tour over the next two weeks; if you want to see him in person he's posted a schedule of events on his blog.

Please give Steven a warm welcome!